Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 2 on Human Services

Good afternoon and welcome. Good afternoon and welcome. This is Assembly Budget Subcommitee 2 on Human Services. Today we will be discussing the role of the California Health and Human Services Agency and its departments in facilitating access to safety net programs for vulnerable communities who are in crisis, connecting them to cash, food, health and other services.

The main questions here center on what can and must be done to cut red tape and create a more person centered approach to connect people to services and supports that will keep them from the traumas of destitution, hunger and homelessness.

Next, we will circle back on to topics that have been previously discussed in prior hearings to hear updates, technical assistance and questions from the Administration in the interest of furthering the dialogue.

After in issues 3 and 4, we will hear from the Department of Community Services and Development about their program's roles in emergency response and about what we are hearing about federal threats to CSD programs. We will have public comment at the end. Do not fret. You will see the sun today.

Okay, want to first go ahead and just bring up our first issue so if we can have our panelists come on up. And this panel will be discussing facilitating automatic enrollment in public benefit programs and our Chief Data Officer. You may begin when you are ready.

Thank you so much. Good afternoon. My name is Ryan Gillette. I'm the Chief Data Officer and the Deputy Director with the Research, Automation and Data Division at the company California Department of Social Services. Thank you for inviting us to speak on this important topic.

Our vision at the California Department of Social Services is to make application and renewal processes more accessible, straightforward and integrated across the safety net in a manner that centers client voice and choice.

Part of this includes reducing unnecessary complexity to make sure we are doing everything we can to make it easier for people experiencing need to connect to our programs. To start off with, I want to share a little bit about why we care about cross enrollment.

Safety net programs managed by CDSS and DHCS have a tremendous ability to reduce poverty. A PPIC study from 2022 estimates that CDSS programs lifted 3.3 million Californians out of poverty. This includes 1.7 million children, or about one out of every five children in the state. Deep poverty was reduced by 85% and near poverty was reduced by 59%.

It is clear that these safety net programs are effective for many people experiencing poverty. However, one program alone may not address all the barriers that they are facing. While the state and counties make significant efforts to connect people to all the programs they may be eligible for, this isn't always easy to do.

So why might People Cross Enroll into Other Benefits when thinking about cross enrollment, we first need to consider why people enrolled in one program might not enroll in others. I would like to highlight four reasons that we might consider for this. The first is that they might simply just not be eligible.

Federal programs have different income thresholds, definitions of households, and other eligibility criteria. So it's not a guarantee that if you're eligible for one that you would be eligible for others. The second is they might not want to for personal reasons. Some people may simply prefer not to participate in certain programs.

This may be to their own beliefs, perceptions about the programs, or broader concerns with how their data might be used. The third is that they don't know about the programs themselves, their eligibility, or the processes for applying. Knowledge gaps might prevent some people from seeking out these other programs.

And the fourth is that it might simply be too burdensome to apply relative to the benefit that they would receive by participating. While safety net benefits can be a literal lifeline, the application process can be complex. This can be exacerbated for programs that scale the benefit amount based on Income.

For example, in CalFresh, as a client approaches their income, the income cutoff for the program monthly benefits could get as low as $23 a month, at which point people may not feel like it's worth the hassle. I want to focus on these last two criteria.

People who could be interested and eligible for cross enrollment but aren't accessing benefits. So what do we know about the status quo? CDSS has been making efforts to better understand how our clients interact with the safety net.

With safety net programs, we know the overlap of our clients who are on the active caseload of the major safety net programs like MediCal, CalFresh, and CalWORKS. About 900,000 individuals across the state participate in all three of these programs. CalWORKS has an excellent cross enrollment rate.

CalWORKS recipients are categorically eligible for MediCal and as a result are enrolled as part of the application to CalWORKS. This means that every CalWORKS recipient is also on Medi Cal, and 94% of people currently on CalWORKS are enrolled in all three of those major programs.

For CalFresh recipients, about 76% are enrolled in MediCal and 16% are enrolled in all three. Just 8% are enrolled in CalFresh alone. I'll let my colleagues speak about the MediCal population, but lower percentages, but that's due to the nature of the fact that MediCal is much more generous.

Eligibility Criteria With Regards to SSI over 700,000 SSI recipients receive CalFresh. That's almost 2/3 of all SSI recipients and we are currently working to better understand intersections between the CDSS safety net programs and housing instability.

This this is made possible due to efforts from legislative action that happened in the last budget cycle and we'll have more data on that soon. What is harder to gauge though, is who is eligible for these programs but not enrolled.

CDSS has been working to measure take up rates of CalWORKS and CalFresh as standalone programs, and we have also been working to measure what we call an in reach measure. This measure aims to help us better understand what percentage of the CalFresh caseload might also be eligible for CalWORKS but has not enrolled.

Last year we conducted preliminary analysis and determined that 2.1 million people currently on CalFresh should be eligible for CalWORKS as well. Of those, about 878,000 had already enrolled in CalWORKS, or about 42%. This means that there were an additional 1.2 million who were likely eligible for CalWORKS but not enrolled.

For context, our current CalWORKS caseload is about 950,000 individuals. California was the first state in the nation to do this type of analysis, and since then other states have been reaching out to learn from us about our methodology.

Using this information, we conducted outreach to these likely eligible clients via text message to let them know that they were likely eligible for CalWORKS. By staggering the time at which we sent these messages out to the caseload, we were able to measure the actual causal impact of sending out these text messages.

We found that families that were messaged were 21% more likely to apply for CalWORKS and 13% more likely to successfully enroll. This resulted in about 15,000 new applications and 340 new enrollments at a cost of only $1.33 per induced application.

While any increase is a success given the minuscule cost of the outreach via text, we were only able to induce less than 1% of the potentially eligible individuals to apply. Unfortunately, this is about the best that we can hope for with a text message intervention alone. So where do we go next?

As we think about how to scale cross enrollment to reach a broader swath of the potentially eligible, there are three challenges to consider. The first is data alignment and quality. In an ideal world, we would use data collected through existing processes to determine likely eligibility and pre fill applications, providing both better knowledge and reducing administrative burden.

However, data collected for one program may not provide enough information to evaluate eligibility for another program if key criteria like household and income are defined differently between these programs. The second is legal, there are limitations to how data can be used.

With CalFresh, for example, there are federal limitations that impact the ability to share data for the purposes of cross enrollment, and this in particular becomes a challenge when trying to pull in data from entities that are not as explicitly running federal or state safety net programs such as education and employment entities. Finally, technology.

If there were available funding and staff capacity, these efforts might be furthered by building tools to facilitate recommendations, engines, consent management, et cetera. It is important to note though, that there are significant privacy and personal choice related questions that arise related to some ideas for streamlining and increasing enrollment.

While we want to make it as easy as possible for clients to receive services that they are eligible for, we need to do so in a way that empowers and centers the humans who will be receiving those services.

We may need to have further conversations with a variety of stakeholders, including clients, to understand how to balance these considerations effectively.

In closing, I would emphasize the importance of engaging stakeholders and clients to center their voice and preferences, continuing to explore data sharing and consent management strategies to ensure access to the data necessary to determine likely eligibility and support for technology to facilitate cross enrollment, eligibility analyses and the tools that can help reach eligible clients to encourage them to enroll. Thank you.

Good afternoon Chair Jackson and Members of the Human Services Subcommitee. I'm Yingjia Huang, the Deputy Director of Healthcare Benefits and Eligibility at the California Department of Healthcare Services.

And thank you for inviting me here today to speak about the Department's focus on whole person care and its efforts to streamline application and enrollment processes between the Medi Cal program and other social services programs through facilitated enrollment and other mechanisms.

So, Department of Healthcare Services is a single state agency responsible for financing and administering the state's Medicaid program which provides healthcare services to low income families and who meet eligibility requirements.

Medi Cal is authorized and funded through a federal state partnership covering currently a little under 15 million people statewide, so close to one of every three Californians are covered under Medi Cal.

The MEDI Cal program covers a full breadth of services the physical, mental, substance use disorder services, pharmacy, dental, vision and other their long term services and supports.

Firstly, definitely want to talk a little bit about the Medi Cal transformation and our focus in terms of creating the person centered approach through our California Advancing and Innovating in Medi Cal known as calaim Initiative, which is an umbrella initiative that looks to drive quality of care improvements, streamline and reduce complexity and build on whole person care using data.

I think key among this umbrella initia a pillar is The Population Health Management Strategy, which specifically is a cohesive statewide approach to connect Members to services that matter for them. So in particular, wanting to lift up, as part of the Population Health Management strategy, we have an IT platform called Medi calconnect that we have built.

It is currently being released in phases, really using data that is available to the Department, aggregating data from multiple state entities as well as Medi Cal management care plans, and really using that to kind of drive and look at what the person really needs in terms of providing the kind of the adequate level of support and services for them.

In particular, we are looking to launch the last phase of the MediCal Connect portal, which is actually going to be the person centered kind of platform for the Member. And that is anticipated in the fall of 2026.

And it's supposed to be a one stop shop for MediCal Members for the 15 million medical Members to have a one stop shop to look at how they can navigate all the multiple layers of their Medicaid benefit, such as transportation potentially, and even looking at whether they may potentially be eligible for CalFresh. Again, this is.

We're looking to launch this in the fall of 26, doing a lot of stakeholder engagement at this time with our local counties, eventually also talking to Medi Cal Members in the community to make sure that we're really serving the person, as my colleagues, Ryan, have shared. And being person centered is very fundamental to our work across dhcs.

Now I want to talk a little bit more about the overlap of the MediCal program, CalWORKS and CalFresh. So under federal law, there's a process in the Medicaid world called facilitated enrollment, a term of art, really.

It just means that individuals can automatically enroll in the MediCal program based on their eligibility for another social services program. And this is actually specific to CalWORKS. So in the State of California, all our CalWORKS Members or beneficiaries are actually enrolled in MediCal. So we have a 100% saturation rate.

Because if you're eligible for CalWORKS, you are more than likely eligible for the MediCal program. And I think that speaks volumes. We have participated and selected this on the MediCal side through federal authority to actually use the CalWORKS eligibility determination so that you can enroll people automatically into the Medi Cal program.

Understanding that, you know, with varied eligibility criteria, it is difficult for Members in the community to kind of navigate such a plethora of requirements as it relates to the CalFresh program. I think as my colleague at CDSS shared. There is a difference in the way eligibility kind of program structures are defined.

But I think through the years we have kind of strengthened the connection between the MediCal program and the CalFresh program. And I'll share a couple of examples of kind of what we have done in the last few years. Very specifically, the CalFresh and MediCal program, we share the same paper and online application.

So individuals who are interested in applying for both programs can use the same application. And we also accept a CalFresh only application or renewal as a MediCal application if the person indicates they're interested in enrolling in Medi Cal kind of during their various kind of points of their consumer journey and they have identified that need.

Secondly, all the information gathered as part of the application process for these programs, such as income and residency information, can be used towards MediCal.

So whatever the individual fills out on their CalFresh application, again, because we use the same application to the extent that they meet the different eligibility criteria, such as income or household composition, we could actually use this information for the purposes of the MediCal program.

So I think it helps to streamline and eliminate the need for counties to go and burden the family or the Member and ask for additional verification multiple times, which does add to the confusion, I think, in the consumer journey.

And lastly, with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, we've implemented the COVID California portal, which is another pathway for health care coverage where an individual can apply for health only, whether you're interested in MediCal or the Covered California subsidized programs.

So at the end of the application, once you the application, we do have a page that refers them if they're interested for applying for CalFresh or CalWORKS and it refers them back to the applications for those programs.

I think from a data perspective, we are very committed to kind of tracking what I would say the penetration or the saturation rates across these programs. Today in 2025, 92% of CalFresh recipients are also enrolled in the MediCal program. That's about 5.1 of the 5.6 million plus or minus CalFresh recipients today in the program.

Even though we have 92%, I think we can still, you know, we know there's some opportunity for us in terms of looking at how we could better outreach to these individuals. And I can speak a little bit more and a little bit in my remarks in terms of the opportunity.

I think in General, just even kind of looking at the landscape, DSS and DHCS is very committed to the extent we can anytime there's a new development in terms of a programmatic need or a programmatic requirement.

At the federal front, we try to align our policies and smooth out kind of the consumer journey for the person as much as possible. But there are some limitations. And I think my colleague Ryan has shared a little bit of that.

I think one of the biggest challenges is there is a difference in terms of how CalFresh and the medi Cal program, on a federal perspective, how the eligibility is determined. So very specifically for CalFresh, we do look at. We define the household very differently.

Calfresh, we look at the individuals who purchase and prepare food together as part of the household composition. The income levels are slightly different with MediCal, with the Affordable Care Act, we look at the way you file taxes and your tax filing status.

So I think just in terms of the bare definitions and how we roll up up all these various criteria to output an eligibility determination is very different. I think that creates that barrier in terms of how we can sync up in terms of our program.

However, that being said, I think through the last few years, we've looked at other opportunities. I think currently, kind of through some of the work with stakeholders, we're looking at doing a little nudge, if you will, an online nudge for individuals that are interested in applying for these programs on benefits Cal as an option.

So really using and leveraging the existing IT tools and platforms are kind of here in the year 2025 to help us kind of align our programs better. Even though, as Ryan shared, you know, there are some privacy and data and consent issues that we have to be definitely cognizant of.

If the consumer doesn't raise their hand and want to actually apply, we could simply nudge them and say, hey, you may actually be eligible. Have you considered this? So I think that's some opportunities there. And I think in General, in closing, just really wanting to stress, I think just looking at the.

For example, In January of 2014, the number of CalFresh recipients also receiving Medi Cal was about 80%. And I think as we kind of fast forward to about a decade later, we are at 92%, which is a very good percentage point. Definitely not the 100%.

But given there is some variation in how we look at eligibility, I think that's still a proud moment for us. And I think there's more work to do. And also kind of taking into context that through the line 10 years, both programs have grown enormously.

And with the growth, we're still able to hit the 92% kind of saturation rate between the programs and stressing that for Health For MediCal, 100% of individuals on CalWORKS are also enrolled in the Medi Cal program.

So which we have chosen at DHCS to elect that federal option to make sure we are easing the way for the consumer as they're kind of navigating the ecosystem of public assistance programs. Thank you. I'm happy to answer any questions.

All right, good afternoon, Dr. Jackson. Brandon Hansard, Deputy Director of Benefit Enrollment Technology at the Office of Technology and Solutions Integration.

As my colleagues have shared, the departments within California Health and Human Services Agency work together to look for opportunities to advance a more streamlined, less burdensome enrollment process in the various programs through changes in policy, process and technology.

Your agenda today pointed to the CALHHS Agency's guiding principles and strategic priorities, and I'd like to highlight the Agency's IT and Data Strategic Plan published last year that supports these principles and priorities and illustrate where the CalSAWS system fits into this plan in the IT data and strategic Plan.

The State's vision of a Healthy California for all requires that CALHHS understands and delivers the comprehensive services required to meet unique individual, community and population needs. So to realize this vision, we must measure the outcomes associated with these services and use them to inform policy, program processes and service change.

This will take the form of a future digital ecosystem that securely and appropriately develops and uses innovative IT and data solutions for outreach, person centered services, value measurement, and ultimately the continuous testing and refinement of the state's effectiveness in supporting all Californians health and wellness.

While it's an aspirational vision, we do have today a foundational IT system being the single statewide automated welfare system that supports the eligibility and benefits determination public assistance case management and public assistance case management across California, along with the statewide data that can be used to inform changes that may be necessary for more effective services.

Since October 2023, CalSaws is the single system for the state and we're Supporting MEDI Cal Cowworks, CalFresh cash assistance program for Immigrants, Foster Care, Kinship Guardianship Assistance Program, Adoption Assistance Program, Refugee Cash Assistance, California Food Assistance Program, General Assistance, General Relief, Welfare to Work Employment Programs and the California Medical Services Program along with the core system.

The Benefits Cal Portal was implemented at the same time and this service connects the over 5.3 million account users directly to their applications and the case management activities for their benefit programs in California.

It's also the portal for the over 14,000 community based organizations that assist customers within benefits Cal and benefits Cal was designed, developed and enhanced using user centered design.

Human First Aspect it's founded on keeping that human experience at the forefront of system design and the approach includes ongoing engagement with stakeholders, community Members to conduct discovery sessions, understand the current and desired human experience, and together the feedback regarding the actual experience to improve the usability CalSaws and benefits Cal were built to achieve objectives that we will leverage for continuous improvement in the application and enrollment.

Some of the items that we look at are enabling a consistent client experience across California.

A scalable infrastructure and architecture provide the high performance systems that are highly available with minimum downtime, secure systems for the data and the workloads that comply with all of the various regulations and policies, maximize our reusability of the technology for future initiatives, build sustainable business capability and utilize architecture that allows flexibility and adaptability for changing business needs.

We will continue to engage with our program partners at CDSS and DHCs to leverage our IT investment in CalSAWS and BenefitSCAL to support enhancement to the application and enrollment process.

Aanam Khan, Department of. Finance Nothing further, but happy to answer any questions.

Brian Metzker, LAO no specific comments. At this time, but available for questions.

Obviously one of the things that we're trying to do is add some consistency and predictability as we begin to think about across administrations. How do we make sure that we continue on with this work work?

Do you have any suggestions on things that the Legislature needs to probably get more involved in and probably create some transition language for for consistency sake? Obviously I understand the data concerns that you're supposed to have.

I'm wondering, you know, just from a user standpoint, right, that if I'm at the WIC office or I'm at the CalFresh office, being able to have an opportunity where people, where someone can say, while you're here, you may be eligible for other services, would you like us to automatically enroll you? I mean, those type of things.

What systems can we make it more at the user level that we're making it easier to inform folks who are facing some sort of instability? They wouldn't be at the offices if there wasn't some sort of instability.

And which means if you are facing instability, that means that there's a whole host of things you may not know or know there may be access to, but we assume or the way we operate makes them have to be an expert of these systems in many cases. Right?

So what are some tangible things that we can do regulatorily budgetarily to make progress on this issue? Right. I think one of your question, one of the questions Is what are the top three things you think we could be doing?

Yeah, I'm happy to start that. Really appreciate this question. So a few things that I think you've hit on here that I want to follow up on. First, I do want to call out the great work that is happening at counties, at WIC offices. Zero, absolutely.

You know, the people that work in those places know a ton about these programs and they're doing as much as they can to connect people to the things that they think they might be eligible for. I think the challenge that they experience is the same one that we have because the eligibility criteria are slightly different.

They have a limited set of information and they can't say for certain that while you're here in front of me, I know that you are also eligible for this other program that's, that's maybe, maybe a little bit different if you're actually in a county office because they can ask you those follow up questions and can run it right then.

But I will say I think we are getting closer to the point of being able to do some of that calculation that could be a resource to eligibility workers, wherever they may be. That could happen maybe not in real time, but in quick time to create that list of. Here are some other.

Here's the sort of panoply of things that someone might be eligible for. I do think that there's still some data hurdles that we would have to bridge with that. And I know there's various pieces of legislation that we might be talking about later that will partially address some of that.

But I think that the first part of it is we just even need to know what the other set of things are that people might be eligible for.

From there though, we need to figure out how to get that information into the hands of the right people to facilitate those handoffs or how do other methods of engaging people off cycle. Right. Because it might be that when you initially show up and are applying for Medi Cal, you're not eligible for CalFresh. Right.

But maybe that changes at the time of your reapplication or something else changes about your circumstances. And as we saw, you know, we've tried to message people, but it's a lot of noise. Right. It's really hard to cut through that.

So I do think that we need to be creative in thinking about what are some of those other communication pathways strategies, outreach methods, methods that may be completely new technology tools that we don't have yet. You know, I think we need to do some homework and thinking about what that might be.

But we also like just knowing that someone might be eligible is half the battle. The other half of it is figuring out how to get that information to them and to get the client to actually decide to enroll. Sorry, go ahead.

Well, what can we do to ensure we're going through all those questions that you just outlined. Right. Because right now there is nothing saying that a Department or the next person who takes your position has to do it, continue the work. Right. So what can we do to institutionalize this process so that we can get.

As close as we can? And we know it's not 100% because we're also relying on federal requirements, which could be a whole other mess. But, you know, what can we do to institutionalize the process so that we can keep knocking down these hurdles that are very real, but doesn't seem impossible in some cases?

I can jump in a little bit. So, again, as I alluded to the agency's principles and the culture that we have at Health and Human Services Agency is fundamental to this. Again, we're not independent departments working in silos. We cross Department collaborate all the time when we look at the guiding principles.

And now with our IT and data strategic plan, we're utilizing that as guidelines of how we engage in all technology discussions. Are we looking at IT holistically? Are we looking at the person centered approach? How can we leverage the data and the assets that we have across departments?

So again, as you talk about transition, I think what is being. We've had a transition at Health and Human Services over the past year from one secretary to another. But we have a fundamental culture and a fundamental guidelines and, you know, direction that we're going. We have a North Star that all of our work aligns to.

What would you say is the sense of urgency, though?

I think it's in our forethoughts of every decision that we make as we work through any of our change requests, any of our contracts, any of our new proposals. It's what is part of our daily thought process.

And I would echo that. I think this has been something that we have all wanted to do for a long time. It's just hard to do.

I think the fact that so many of the challenges with eligibility are due to differences in federal rules is part of the reason why we can't just sign people up for, you know, one program, give them a common application and have them fill out everything.

I think why this gets hard is because we have to do these workarounds by, you know, we can do a lot online. Right.

And I think that benefitscal has been a great, great at trying to solve this, but there's only so much efficiency that we can get out of a tool like that when we have federal rules that are different and kind of require us to ask questions the same way multiple times.

So I do think that there's, you know, maybe there's room in some other technology efforts that we have underway to make sure that that's an explicit criteria for thinking about when you're doing verifications. Do we want to try to figure out if you verify for other programs you might be eligible for?

But that's, you know, the reason that this isn't moving faster is because it's actually just really hard to do.

No, absolutely.

Yeah.

No, absolutely. There's no doubt about the complexities and those things. And, you know, just want to make sure that as we think about things like automatic automated enrollment and no wrong door type processes, that we actually make that in and of itself a priority. You see what I'm saying?

Which will help with enrollment numbers, which will help with everything else. And it's just my hope that we can find a way. And of course, I mean, understandably that some of these are budgetary issues too. Right. Which is why there's no better place to talk about budgetary issues than the budget Subcommitee. We'll always take more funding.

But we want to make sure that we start heading more in that direction. So obviously we'll keep this item open. LAO would love to have your thoughts on things that we can do on our end with our authority to be able to continue to head in this direction. Anything else anyone else would like to add?

Thank you so much for your time. Thank you.

IT.

Assistant Secretary. Hi.

You may begin when you're ready.

Hello.

Okay. I'm going to be presenting on the Employment first office or do you.

No, this this item is on chair priorities.

Zero. If you're looking first for the foster care multi agency office I'll be covering that for calhs.

We'll just go through item through each item. Got it. Okay. Yeah we'll just do it east by. Yeah we're. We're trying to figure out how to do this the best way.

It's a lot of items in one.

So yeah we'll just do it by each proposal that way is the idea is how do we make sure that we know when we should be receiving information if you don't already have the information here at this time want to make sure that we're continuing to making progress before we get into may revise crazy time.

Okay so let's start off with the foster care multi agency office and you may begin.

Understood and will do. Jennifer Troia on behalf of the Department of Social Services it's good to be with you this afternoon on these topics. First want to again acknowledge and appreciate your interest in ensuring coordination within the foster care system to ensure the safety and well being of our children and youth in foster care.

We highlighted in the prior hearing on this item a number of efforts that are underway in terms of how we manage that coordination.

Now just to briefly revisit those include Assembly Bill 2083 which created a system of care team at both the state level and memorandums of understanding at the local level a joint resolution team and tiered technical assistance to counties. The complex Care Steering Committee.

We also talked about the Child Welfare Council and its coordinating efforts as well as the office of the Foster Care Ombudsperson at cdss. I think today we would just continue to emphasize the importance of building on the strengths of these multi agency collaborative efforts that do already exist.

And I don't think we have any other more specific specific technical assistance to provide at this time. So happy to answer any questions if you have them but I think our emphasis is still on those efforts.

Sure. I believe what we had was we had a scoring last year of this item and we just want to make sure that that scoring is still consistent with what we were given last last time.

I don't think we have a specific fiscal estimate this time but I'll defer to finance if there's anything they want to.

Yeah. And OMCON Department of Finance. I don't have that information in front of me but happy to follow up and provide to make sure that that still is the latest scoring.

Okay. So please, if we can get that. I think that's, that's the only thing we're asking for at this point is verifying the scoring on that item. Employment First.

Good afternoon, Chair Jackson. My name is Deborah Cooper. I'm an Assistant Secretary with the California Health and Human Services Agency. Thank you for the opportunity today to speak about the Employment first office.

So as part of the enacted 2024 budget and in order to solve a $47 billion deficit, there was a permanent reduction of $1.5 billion to reflect the elimination of vacant positions and 7.95% reduction in operational budgets to state agencies and departments in 2024.

25, as part of the government efficiency drills, the budget of $1 million for establishing the Office of Employment first was eliminated. And this difficult decision to include this office in part of the operations efficiencies was twofold. One was the office had not yet been staffed and set up.

And two, we knew that aligning with objectives of the office, CALHS would continue to work in concert with the Department of Developmental Services, Department of Rehabilitation to assist individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities to find and maintain competitive integr employment. This $1 million reduction is a permanent ongoing reduction.

While CALHS does not have the resources to perform all of the duties that would have been included in the proposed Employment first office, we maintain that access to competitive integrated employment is an Administration priority.

CALHs, DDS and DOR have several ongoing and new projects aimed at assisting individuals to attain employment and incentivizing employers to hire individuals with idd, many of which were highlighted at the last hearing. We remain dedicated to continue coordinating with DDS and DOR as well as with other state entities within the Administration and external stakeholders.

And this coordinated approach amongst the departments in CALHS right sizes the use of state resources for the task at hand rather than committing ongoing resources to establish a new governmental structure. I welcome any questions.

Thank you very much with that. As you know that this was a priority of the past chair of this Committee when it was Health and Human Services Committee. Obviously this also remains a legislative priority. And so at this time we remain opposed to the proposed cut. We definitely need further discussion on this, particularly with Dr.

Arambula and his office. So I really ask you to reach out to making sure that there is an understanding about the activities that are maybe already taking the place that was intended for this office and to see if we can reach a resolution as we head into the may revise process.

Thank you and we will continue engaging and reach out to Dr. Abrambula.

Thank you so much.

Food Insecurity Officer so again, Jennifer Troia, on behalf of the Department of Social Services and again thanking you for the continued interest in ensuring that we address food insecurity across the state. We have reviewed the proposal.

We do have some technical assistance and also some cost analysis that we will provide in greater detail to you and your staff afterwards. But I'll give you a brief overview now in terms of technical assistance, a couple of notes.

The first is that to achieve the intent of the proposal, it will require in some instances new data sharing agreements, such as an agreement between CDCR for data related to formerly incarcerated individuals and CDSs.

So that's going to take us some time to assess the feasibility and timelines for those agreements before we can commit to the timelines for reporting on the information that's required.

The second note that I would offer on technical assistance basis is that we don't believe that we can meet the request to establish a unique participation rate for the California Food Assistance Program or CFAP the way that our participation rates are now.

We don't actually distinguish between CalFresh and CFAP and we don't collect data in a way that would allow us to uniquely set aside the CFAP population and set up a separate calculation. So again, happy to talk about it more but want to give that high level note.

And then finally, we believe that it would take additional time for us to complete the legislative report that is requested. So rather than July 12026 we believe we would need until July 12027 to account for the research and data work that would need to be completed.

In terms of costs, we do estimate that we would need state operations funding for two research data specialists to implement the new methodology and the reporting on an ongoing basis. So we will provide the more specific numbers to your staff and your office as soon as we can after the hearing.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. You know it's we, we do see that other states are having higher participation rates than we do. And being who we are as California, if we ain't number one, we have a problem.

The goal is to continue to even utilize some of the other states best practices in which what we're trying to do now, ensuring that there is central responsibility to work on increased participation rates so that we can continue to work on which continues to be a growing food insecurity issue here in California.

Thank you so much for the technical assistance. Looking forward to seeing the numbers so that we can be able to engage fully in the may revise process. Yeah, thank you so much for that mandated reporting.

So again, acknowledge and appreciate your commitment to these reforms, to comprehensively supporting the communities we serve and disrupting the disparities that we experience in the child welfare system. We talked in the last hearing about recommendations from the mandated reporting to community supporting task force, and we are working to implement many of them.

We also discussed how we're working on updates to mandated reporter training. Currently, we're happy to continue to provide any technical assistance with respect to the proposal to mandate the use of this training. We will provide very soon to your office a more specific fiscal estimate.

There are going to be costs that we anticipate related to both the delivery of that training and to the social workers time for participating in the training on a mandated basis. And so those are the costs.

We expect that those costs would be in the low millions of dollars one time and then hundreds of thousands of dollars ongoing. So we' offer those more specific numbers to you as soon as we can, but that's what you can expect to see.

Okay, thank you so much. And guaranteed income.

So, as you know, we oversee the guaranteed income pilot program now, which targets former foster youth and pregnant individuals.

Based on the proposal that you have shared, we followed up with your office and understand that you'd received an estimate from the Department of Finance about the cost of closing a tax exemption, that those would generate about $119 million in state revenue.

So our sort of technical assistance and costs of the program are based on looking at that as the universe of the costs or the supports that we would be working with. So with that in mind, we'd offer a few things by way of technical assistance.

First, for technical reasons, we would recommend drafting this as new statutory language rather than piggybacking on the existing language that's in the statute. If you were going to use the existing statute, there are some changes to it that we would recommend recommend to you so we can offer those more specific pieces of language. Okay.

Then additionally, to streamline implementation and reduce the required state operations resources, we think it may be worth considering implementation of a more permanent program that would be operated as an allocation to the counties rather than an open competitive grant process that the state would administer.

So that's just feedback for your consideration in terms of how to potentially streamline the amount of funding that needs to go to admin versus the funding that would go to the recipients of the guaranteed income.

Got it. If we distribute to the counties. But wouldn't that also add additional administrative.

There would presumably be some admin, but not the same amount that comes with repeatedly running competitive grant application processes and RFPs.

So you're saying it would be more cost efficient to do it at the county level?

That is interesting that it might be helpful to explore. I don't know that we have the exact answer for you yet, but it seems like a set of questions that we thought might be helpful to ask.

Absolutely, Lao, it would be good to get your thoughts on that. What would be the most cost effective way to administer a permanent guaranteed income? Is it to maintain it at the state level or to bring it down to the county levels? That'll be interesting just to see the costs associated with booing one or the other.

Appreciate that. Department of Finance, you have anything anomaly?

Department of Finance Nothing further, but happy to answer any questions.

Lao Angela Short, Legislative Analyst Office we are just ready and available to help the Legislature with reviewing any additional information from the Administration as it becomes available available and providing other technical assistance as requested. So just ready and here to help?

Absolutely. Well, you already have my item, right?

Yes. All right, got it.

All right, thank you. Thank you all so very much. Thank you for your continued communication and looking forward to continue our partnership. Thank you. Thank you. Issue number three. We're rolling baby. You may begin when you're ready.

So good afternoon Dr. Jackson, and first off, thank you for this opportunity to discuss how the community based organizations that CSD funds and overseas responded to the LA fires. Before I get into the details, I think it's important to place our local partners and programs in the broader context of disaster response.

All local partners are community based organizations that have been serving low income Californians in their communities for decades.

CSD contracts with a network of nonprofits and local governmental organizations to facilitate the local Administration of federal grants programs such as the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, the Community Services Block Grant and the Department of Energy Weatherization Assistance Program.

These organizations are generally involved in Administration of other forms of low income supportive services outside of CSD's programs. The federal program CSD administers are not entitlement programs and the funding California receives is limited compared to the need that exists and these programs are often not positioned to meet all the needs of low income Californians.

For instance, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program California last year received about $247 million in federal funding to support energy Bill assistance and weatherization services. This funding typically limits services to approximately 6% of the income eligible population in a given year due to strong demand for liheap services and limited funding.

Local agencies often prioritize like heap assistance to the most vulnerable households, those with the lowest income, the highest energy burden, and with Members of the vulnerable population groups. LIHEAP avails specific forms of assistance to, you know, to individuals during a disaster such as an extreme weather event, wildfire or natural disaster.

These offerings include temporary housing assistance, transportation services, and emergency energy related appliances like portable batteries, air conditioners and generators. The decision to activate these emergency related provisions is decided locally and balanced with available funding and the desire to extend services to as many low income families as possible.

This means that in the case of a natural disaster like the LA fires, our local agencies don't have the ability to bring significant resources to bear that other state and federal partners can in the event of a natural disaster, but they can provide short term support to vulnerable Californians during times of crisis, even if the scale of that support is going to be more limited than available than what's available through FEMA.

During the LA fires, local CSBG and LIHEAP agencies provided services that included distributing food, essential supplies, housing vouchers and transportation services. Additionally, these organizations supported area recovery efforts by disseminating information on other resources such as donation centers and assistance with loss or damage documents to fire impacted households and individuals.

As an example, during the LA fires, one of our local LIHEAP service providers, the Marvia foundation, responded to the immediate needs of their community by using LIHEAP funds to provide temporary housing for residents displaced by the fires.

They secured hotel rooms for low income households in need, including finding hotels that allowed for pets, supported people with disabilities, and had enough space for larger families. Marvia also arranged for transportation and covered costs like deposits and extra fees.

These efforts provided safety, comfort and a sense of stability to impact the families during a difficult time at the state level. CSD supports our local partners by facilitating requests for assistance both at the state and local level, coordinating communication and ensuring that local agencies have the needed resources and backing during a disaster.

This includes coordinating with the Governor's Office of Emergency Services and with CALHS departments such as the Department of Health and Social Services.

CSD works to ensure that local agencies not only have real time information about state resources that are available during a specific crisis, but also coordinating requests for assistance from the state level that our agencies might be able to address.

As fire recovery continues, our local agencies focus has shifted from emergency assistance to supporting vulnerable individuals and families in need of assistance via a variety of means, including services and assistance provided by CSD's programs and other available resources. Within the community. And I'll pause there to take your questions if you have any.

Thank you very much.

Department of Finance, Kayla Knott, Department of Finance. Nothing further to add. Lao, Angela Short, Lao. No proactive comments, but happy to help answer any questions.

Thank you very much.

When we start talking about the response and impact for the Los Angeles fires, do you anticipate additional resources being necessary coming through your office to be able to continue to work on the various things that need to happen for, for cleanup, for additional services in terms of housing, additional services when it comes to, I'm sure there is going to be some various utility issues and all that kind of stuff.

Anything that you foresee coming through your Department.

So in speaking with our providers who are on the front lines, they have shared with us that some of the needs that individuals have that have been impacted by the fires goes beyond the scope of our program. So for example, with the LIHEAP program and home weatherization services, some of these homes need extensive repairs.

And so they will have to defer those needs to other resources that's within the community for the areas that they feel that they can impact. Our programs are positioned to address those needs. For example, LIHEAP and utility assistance, financial energy assistance. The energy providers feel that they're able to address those needs.

But obviously we're going to have to continue to monitor because there are a number of individuals, I think I can't remember the specific number, but there are a significant number of folks that were unemployed as a result of the fire and as, and probably will have ongoing needs.

But their needs will be dictated by how they transition to finding employment. And some of them will be routed through some of our CSBG agencies that are more poised to address those specific needs that those clients, those households or individuals will need. Food assistance, housing, employment and training, things of that nature.

Okay, any questions, additional questions or comments? Let's move on to issue number four. Federal threats and possible impacts.

I think in the agenda. There was another question about the role that csd. You want to talk about issue number three. Yes.

Yep, go for it.

Okay. So this will be brief. There are four ways in which CSD's programs and local agencies can help Californians as we enter the extreme heat season. First, under the LIHEAP program, we provide assistance in helping low income households pay their energy bills.

You know, during this extreme heat, this is typically a season where utility bills run at their highest and the light heap assistance is valuable to those individuals to help ensure that they have the financial means to properly heat. I mean to cool their homes during that peak season.

The second is through our weatherization services where we provide energy efficiency upgrades at no cost to the residents which serves as a long term solution to managing energy usage and expenditures within the home. These services include retrofits that include insulation, high performance windows, energy efficient equipment, appliances and upgraded H Vac systems for heating and cooling.

The third item is under our farm worker household and multifamily affordable housing projects under our state funded Low Income Weatherization Program, we're coupling energy efficiency measures with solar PV to further defray the cost of electricity, all the while of reducing, excuse me, greenhouse gas emissions and certainly during all of our providers that administer energy resources also refer individuals to cooling centers and other supports that are available in the community as well.

Thank you very much. Issue Number four.

so as noted. In the Agenda Program staff were recently laid off in the Federal Division of Energy Assistance which oversees a low income home energy assistance program and is under the Office of Community Services.

These layoffs certainly create concerns over the Department's ability to receive timely responses to questions and approval of items related to implementation of liheap.

However, as of today, we are not experiencing any immediate impacts to LIHEAP's ability to provide benefits to low income households as a result of these job cuts and our priority remains on administering funds awarded to California and ensuring Californians have uninterrupted access to LIHEAP services.

This remains the case for all of our Federal programs which continue to receive funding and operate and provide vital services to low income Californians. For Federal fiscal year 2025, California received $215.7 million in federal funding for LIHEAP and 33.8 million funding for CSBG. These funds were appropriated by Congress under various continuing resolutions passed in 2024.

The funding received for LIHEAP is approximately 90% of 2024 grant levels of the grant 2024 grant and for CSBG 50% of the 2024 grant award. Congress passed a continuing resolution in March that funds the Federal government for the entire 2025 fiscal year at 2024 levels.

CSD is currently waiting details from Federal HHS on additional awards for the CSBG program and about an hour ago just learned that Federal HHS will be releasing the balance of LIHEAP funds to states tomorrow, which is very welcome news with regards to the Federal budget next year.

We have not seen any official budget proposals for our Programs for the 2026 federal fiscal year where we are monitoring budget developments at the federal level very closely. We have seen reports in the media that the Trump Administration is considering defunding our federal programs as part of the proposed 2026 budget.

But there has not, to my knowledge been any official budget proposal released yet by the Administration. So we'll have to wait to see what impact the federal budget for 2026 will have on our programs.

LIHEAP is the only state program that provides financial assistance so to low income households to help them afford the cost of electricity and gas and other heating fuels, use it for their homes and the weatherization services we provide are critical resource for improving the health safety of low income households while addressing long term energy costs.

The local nonprofits and governments that receive community services block grant funding rely on the funds to administer a wide variety of anti poverty services and activities ranging from food banks to supportive services to housing.

While CSBG funding is relatively limited compared to other state and federal programs, agencies leverage CSBG funding to fill critical gaps based on locally determined needs and often use these dollars to support other grants and programs. Any reduction in funding for our programs will have a direct impact on California's low income households already struggling to make ends meet.

Under the last Trump Administration, the President's proposed budget sought to eliminate CSD's programs like LIHEAP and CSBG. Ultimately the federal budgets in these years signed by the President but by President Trump provided stable funding for our programs with slight increases year over year.

CST's programs have historically received bipartisan support and hopeful that bipartisan spirit of supporting programs that strengthen the self sufficiency and economic security low income families can continue.

Thank you very much. Obviously continuing to monitor and continuing to make sure that the public is aware of the various federal threats that we're facing from the Trump Administration. It is good to hear that there will be another allocation of funds to you and hope that that will continue on for the next budget cycle as well.

So please keep us informed on any other possible threats that may be that may come into fruition.

As you know, by the time the Federal Government finishes their budget process, we will California will be done with this budget process, which means that hopefully we will have time to spend more time with our families, but we fully anticipate possibly having to come right back up here to clean up as much of the mess as possible.

Any questions or comments from Committee Members? Singha, thank you so much. Thank you. Of course issue number five is for non agendized items and so please take a look at those. We want to thank the panelists very much. I know you all didn't believe me. It's public comment time. I don't even.

I didn't even believe me, to be honest. I was just lying, hoping it'll come true. But here we are. We will now begin public comment. As a reminder, we welcome public comment on any issue on the agenda. We have some folks lining up here would like to provide public comment.

Want to urge everyone please brief comments under 2 minutes, please, so that we can hear from everyone. Name and affiliation, please.

It'll be brief. Rebecca Gonzalez with the Western center on Law and Poverty. Thank you for having this hearing today. We appreciate the discussion to facilitate automatic enrollment and effort to streamline enrollment in programs. Just as important as getting people enrolled is keeping people enrolled. So we encourage the Legislature to keep working on these issues.

We also appreciate the Legislature's investment in piloting the nation's first statewide GI program for foster youth, pregnant people and older adults.

Building on the success and momentum of these investments, we request the Legislature to provide full funding for AB661, the guaranteed income Research and Expansion act, which would direct cdss to contract with a qualified research entity to produce comprehensive review outlining recommendations on the feasibility and pathway to implementing a permanent GI program.

Also want to express support for the conversation about mandated reporting and making it more of a community supporting program and generally support those reforms. Thank you.

Thank you. Name and affiliation, please.

Good afternoon. Amanda Kirchner with County Welfare Directors Association. Just want to be under option number two in the discussion on mandated reporting.

Want to thank you, sir, for your leadership and continuing to keep this at the forefront so that we can ensure that these vulnerable populations are best served by our mandated reporting system and our child welfare system. As you know, we are in Support of your AB601.

Just want to specifically call out, we need significant investment in prevention services.

And so we would like to continue to work with the Administration to be able to draw down the FFPSA Part 1 funding so that we can continue to create that streamline, build out the capacity, build out the training needs so that we can work with our CBOs and other county organizations to really do an upstream effect.

And then under the guaranteed income, to the extent that there's conversations around making that a permanent program and having it be county administer, we would just ask that we be included in those conversations, especially around estimating costs, but certainly around implementation and planning. Thank you.

Absolutely. Thank you. Payment affiliation, please.

Mr. Chair and Members, Monica Miller, on behalf of the National Council of Jewish Women, Los Angeles. Two quick points. First of all, on the guaranteed income piece I want to echo what my colleagues said from the Western center of Poverty.

We definitely would love to see some support financially on behalf of your colleagues, AB661 to be able to implement that legislation should we be successful and get a signature from the Governor, get it through the Legislature first and then get a signature from the Governor.

Additionally, would love to work with your team as you work towards a permanent statewide proposal related to guaranteed income and the funding. Want to have some conversations around. You know, we are One of the seven pilot programs that received funding from the 35 million a couple of years ago.

Want to talk about as a community based organization how it's best to utilize those resources, et cetera, and how we can be helpful. So we'll continue to work with your office on that.

And then secondly, as it relates to the LA County update on the fires briefly, National Council of Jewish Women launched into action when those fires were on the more on the recovery side and we saw a pretty significant need as it relates to cash as we, you know, this whole hearing is about cash and getting that into people's hands quickly.

And while there were some, you know, some quick cash advances from FEMA et cetera, we saw a greater need on the ground specifically as it relates to single household, head of household, et cetera. So we did provide vouchers to community Members.

We reached out to all of the delegation Members in the California State Legislature as well as local county boards of sups and City Council Members to find out how we could be successful. We opened up a recovery system through rented a vacant building in our community to have people come through. We provided vouchers to come through.

We run a number of charitable organizations that are regifting, if you will, stores and we had we gave vouchers out to individuals to come in and get clothing and furniture as they're trying to immediately rebuild their lives as they look long term and what options are available to them.

So so for these reasons we'll continue to watch this item and continue to update you. Thank you so much for this hearing today.

Thank you very much. Name and affiliation please.

Hi there. Thank you Chair Jackson. Sam Wilkinson with Grace and in Child Poverty in California here to align our comments with the Western center on Law and Poverty, specifically on your leadership and support for moving towards automatic enrollment and moving from mandated reporting to community supporting.

Really appreciate your work in those spaces and also align our comments with both the Western center and NCJW LA on our support to study a permanent statewide guaranteed income program to answer the exact questions that you had earlier today about the most effective way to put cash into folks hands who need it most through our efforts with Assemblymember Lee on AB661.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much. Anyone else? Wow. Well I want to thank everyone for showing up for the quickest hearing you will ever participate in. Do not, please do not believe that this will be moving forward. Just be thankful. I want to thank the sergeants. Want to thank Committee staff as always.

Want to thank my staff and my colleagues as well for participating and every one of you who have been participating in this process. Look forward to our continued conversations. Want to remind everyone there is no such thing as over communicating right now. Please continue to engage.

Please continue to provide information so that we can make sure as we go through yet another challenging budget year that we have all the information necessary to make the best decisions possible. So with that we are adjourned.